


Habitual Cohabitation

by eldritcher



Series: A Four Chord Carousel [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Epilogue to Connubium, Established Relationship, Fluff, Happy Ending, Love, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-15 22:34:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29071839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eldritcher/pseuds/eldritcher
Summary: Nobody had bothered to inform Harry that he was married. He rolls with it.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Voldemort
Series: A Four Chord Carousel [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1305938
Comments: 14
Kudos: 69
Collections: Epilogues to eldritcher's old stories





	Habitual Cohabitation

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Connubium](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/751509) by eldritcher. 



> Epilogue to [Connubium](https://eldritcher-hp-fics.dreamwidth.org/tag/connubium) and [Epic of the Forgotten](https://eldritcher-hp-fics.dreamwidth.org/tag/epic+of+the+forgotten).

"So we have to do taxes together this year," Ron explained grimly. 

"The last time I am doing taxes for you," Hermione said, laughing. 

The softness that had returned to their interactions Harry had not seen once since their Fifth Year. Oh, they had loved each other fiercely. Marriage, it turned out, had overwhelmed love. It was the least acrimonious divorce he had seen. He was glad for it. He had not wanted to pick sides. He had not wanted Hugo or Rose to pick sides. 

They were at their local in Camden. It had changed over the past decade. Camden was no longer a place for the artists and the hustlers. Yuppies lived here now. Their local had changed hands and served American IPAs and Belgian Ale now. 

Harry, Ron, and Hermione needed to find a new local, but there weren't many dingy pubs left from the era of Camden they had lived in. There were no starving artists or prostitutes on the streets. 

"How are things with you, Harry?" 

"Good," he replied honestly. 

"Your move was this week, right?" 

"It went well," he confirmed. 

He had given up his Camden flat. He had not lived there in a year. However, he had refused to give it up, afraid that he might have to return. How many times had Ron and Hermione ended up living separately at the Burrow or at Hermione's parents' house, each time they had an acrimonious argument? He did not want to be left stranded, should matters deteriorate in his relationship. His landlord had finally kicked him out, wanting a tenant that lived in the flat.

There had been little to move. He had only his clothes. His furniture, from IKEA, he had donated to his neighbors. His dishware, he had sent to the garbage. 

\------

"Are you going to do something about the clothes?" Voldemort demanded, when Harry returned home pleasantly buzzed. 

Harry had dumped his clothes on the sofa, when he had moved. He had meant to get to folding and hanging them up. He had been busy at work. Narcissa and he were conducting a hostile takeover of Madam Malkin's. Narcissa was. He was merely there to ensure she did not upset Gringotts with her shrewish ways. 

"The life of an entrepreneur!" Harry lamented. "You are here all day, twiddling your thumbs."

"I like twiddling my thumbs on the sofa," Voldemort complained. Then he got up from his desk, where he had been busy with his correspondence, and stretched. Harry ogled him and weighed his chances of getting buggered over the desk. Perhaps if he sashayed up, and arched his neck just so in the way that he knew Voldemort went weak for, and-

An owl zoomed in through their open window. Tawny and fierce and tiny, it made for Harry. 

"Narcissa," he muttered, and waved the pesky owl off before it could begin to nip at his fingers. 

It was a summons. Of course, it was. 

All these years they had run a business together, and Harry swore that it was as if he was on _her_ payroll, instead of the other way around. 

\------

Narcissa looked glum when he arrived at the shop. 

Their neighbor, the bordello with the red drapes and matching carpets, was playing cabaret music. 

Ah, Friday! The burlesque strippers performed on Fridays. 

"Lucius is Madam Malkin's financier," Narcissa said without ado. 

Seated on a bale of tweed, morose and scowling, she did not seem particularly pleased with her husband. 

"Why didn't you tell me this before?" Harry barked, horrified. 

Gringotts would call it a conflict of interest. The press was already up their arses about hostile takeovers. 

"He does not tell me about his financial dealings," Narcissa said bluntly. "It is not the way of marriages as ours." 

Lucius loved her dearly, but was the traditional sort. He had balked at the idea of her holding a job. Harry had used Voldemort to get Lucius to consent. 

Harry could well imagine Lucius confiding in Narcissa nothing of his business dealings, while still bankrolling hers. 

"You didn't tell him we were able to launch a hostile takeover," Harry breathed, patching together the rest of the story. 

"No, he learned about it from the Taberley brothers when they dined at their club today." 

"It will be all right," Harry said finally. 

What else could he say? Lucius had married an ambitious woman and underestimated her. 

Harry and Narcissa had faced worse in building their business. 

Lucius would lose a non-negligible amount of capital that he had invested in Malkin's. He could comfort himself with the truth that he was enriching his wife. 

"Your tax scrolls arrived." 

He groaned and fetched them from her. The tax code was arcane and mysterious. It took up an entire weekend to work through the clauses and caveats, each time he paid his taxes. 

Narcissa kept telling him to use the half-vampire accountant the bordello next-door used. He refused to sink that low. Ron had Hermione to do his. Perhaps the next year, when Ron finally would have to do his taxes by himself, Harry and he could hire the bordello accountant to do theirs. 

He unfurled the scroll. 

Payroll. Importing silks from China. Upgrading the looms in Lancaster. Advertising. 

He frowned. 

There were a bunch of tax-exempt activities that made little sense to him. 

Payments to a bank in Argyll, classified under family support.

Payments to a bank in Sofia, classified under family support. 

Payments to their bordello next door, classified as charity. 

"What is it?" Narcissa asked. 

He shook his head, flummoxed. She came to him and peered at the scroll. 

"Oh!" 

"Oh?" 

"You are married!" 

She looked pleased, and then sad. 

"Narcissa?"

She pointed to the cursive of his name. It was written in green. 

"It is blue when you are unmarried," she explained. 

"I am not married," Harry said, trying to steady his voice. 

She sighed and patted his wrist. 

"Narcissa?" 

"An old Wizarding rule, put into law back when you could steal a bride. It comes from Roman wizarding law, from the time of the Rape of the Sabrines. A year of cohabitation was considered the equivalent of marriage, and conferred marital rights to the woman who would have otherwise no legal recourse." 

He had moved in with Voldemort a year ago, even if he had kept his flat at Camden. 

" _Usus_ , it is called, in Latin law," Narcissa explained. "Habitual cohabitation, if both the woman and the man are unmarried, triggers _Usus_. If the wife wished to end the marriage, she must spend three nights away from the husband each year."

So there was an out. 

Argyll. He looked at the payments again. Minerva had retired to Argyll after Dumbledore's death. In Sofia lived Viktor Krum's mother. 

Voldemort had married Dumbledore for peace. It had been an arrangement in name. Their connubium had held the Wizarding world intact for decades. Throughout their connubium, Dumbledore had loved and adored Minerva. His death had broken her. 

Krum had been killed in a dockhouse by the Thames. Krum had been Voldemort's lover, and Harry had not realized his own attraction until Krum's death. 

The tale of the bordello Narcissa had told Harry once. 

"Your marriage," Harry asked Narcissa curiously. 

" _Manus_. It is an institutionally unequal relationship, to prevent ruptures of familial alliances. The woman belongs to the father, _legally_ , until she is given to the husband." She sighed. "Many of my friends suffered, when they were married to powerful men who treated them little better than pets or house elves."

"Lucius is a good husband," Harry said softly. He may hate the poncy, balding prat, but Lucius doted on Narcissa. 

"The best," she said simply, eyes warm with love. 

They remained silent for a while, before she asked tentatively, "Are you going to undo the marriage?" 

"I should." 

Harry had promised himself that he would not beg for scraps. 

"Harry."

"He doesn't want this." 

"You are the one ignorant of Wizarding law," Narcissa pointed out softly.

\-----

Harry returned home, deeply contemplating Narcissa's words.  
  
Voldemort was in bed, reading a letter. He set it aside when Harry joined him, and doused the candles.

The darkness birthed in Harry a strange confidence, the likes of which he had not seen in himself since Dumbledore's death. 

"Three days," he said softly. "I can stay with Ron." 

Voldemort did not reply, but the tensing of the body beside him told Harry that Narcissa had been right. 

Harry waited him out. He had learned patience over the years.

"There is no need for that," Voldemort said finally. 

"What do you mean?" Harry asked, striving to keep the desperation out of his voice. 

"It does not inconvenience me."

This was an old and loathed dance. How many times had Harry looked for signs that his regard was reciprocated? How many times had Voldemort spoken in silence and pause instead of offering Harry a plain answer? 

"Maybe it inconveniences me," he said bitterly, wanting a straightforward declaration for once.  
  
Voldemort said nothing. 

Harry closed his eyes and decided to shelve the conversation. It would lead nowhere. He was married, if only by a technicality. He had wanted this. Voldemort knew he had wanted this. This was as good as it was going to get. 

"You have me," Voldemort said quietly, placing a hand soft over Harry's heart. "I regret that I cannot offer myself in the ways you wish I could. It is not in me."

Harry suppressed a sigh. Guilt was blooming in him. Whittled of fear and insecurities as they had both become, he knew that to expect more would be futile.

Harry had wanted a marriage. He had not dared ask for it. Voldemort had given it, by exploiting a clause in Wizarding law. 

Narcissa had no legal rights but those her husband allowed her. Hermione had been furious when she had realized that she could not obtain a divorce without Ron initiating the proceedings. 

This was a marriage of equals. If Harry wanted to end it, he merely need stay away for three nights. Their finances need not be mixed if they had no wish to. Neither had rights over the other. 

Habitual cohabitation. 

"I don't mind intermingling our finances," Harry said tentatively. 

He wanted to. He had nursed the idea of marriage as commingling of assets, from the first time he had longed to find someone to trust his heart to. Ron and Hermione had not combined their finances. It had made their divorce easier. 

"You are the rich one," Voldemort said.

"Not a no, then?" Harry queried. 

Voldemort turned to kiss him once, and said quietly, "You have me." 

Harry had an epiphany then. 

"And you have me," he affirmed. 

Voldemort inhaled sharply on hearing Harry speak those words. Harry lifted Voldemort's hand to his lips, to press a kiss to the knuckles. Sighing, pleased, Voldemort shifted closer, brushing his leg against where Harry's need woke fierce. 

"Don't tease," Harry ordered. 

Voldemort laughed, and settled into a pace calculated to inflame Harry. He meant to have Harry humping his leg, didn't he? Well, Harry knew a trick or two.

"Don't tease, _husband_ ," he amended. 

Voldemort's movements lost rhythm. 

It was Harry's turn to laugh smugly. 

Marriage suited them. 

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> [Connubium](https://eldritcher-hp-fics.dreamwidth.org/tag/connubium) and [Epic of the Forgotten](https://eldritcher-hp-fics.dreamwidth.org/tag/epic+of+the+forgotten) are on Dreamwidth.


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